all things new
by LadyMoriel
Summary: A collection of scenes from my Twi'lek Inquisitor's journey from slave to Sith in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Chapters will include warnings as relevant. Chapters will probably vary wildly in length and topic, with additions whenever I feel like it, although once I get a few chapters posted (no idea when that might be), I'll reorder them to be at least roughly chronological.
1. close to home

_Like the summary says, this is a collection of scenes rather than more of an actual fic, because I could try to make this a connected, coherent narrative but that sounds like a lot of work for something with a very tiny audience. For this chapter: as a subscriber, I got a free Nar Shaddaa Sky Palace with the original Strongholds update, however long ago that was at this point. I think I was probably at least halfway through my Inquisitor's storyline by then. I wrote this fairly recently, though, in response to a prompt on Tumblr._

* * *

"Sky palace" sounds overly ostentatious, but once Mirassa sees it, she can understand the name. It's not quite palatial, maybe, but it floats under its own power far above the ground, with nothing but open air and skylanes on all sides. And the entire structure is _hers_. No one can approach without her knowledge or enter without her permission, and although the Nar Shaddaa location is due more to economics and availability than choice, there's nowhere else she feels safer, even surrounded by casinos, crime lords, and frankly incredible levels of corruption. She'd like an apartment in Kaas City at some point, certainly, because it would be convenient and because lush, verdant Dromund Kaas is undeniably beautiful, but Nar Shaddaa is neutral territory. It's a place where anything can be bought or sold, where a person (specifically, an alien who is also a former slave) can disappear into the anonymous throngs for days or months or even years if necessary, and most importantly it isn't inextricably tangled in Sith and Imperial politics.

On a personal level, it's one of the first places she ever visited as a free woman, and it's where she found a discreet cybernetics tech who could fully deactivate the slave collar wired into her nervous system. Nar Shaddaa, in its own dangerous and unpredictable way, _is_ freedom. Even if the name "sky palace" were an oxymoron that overly imaginative realtors with delusions of grandeur applied to a shack in hopes it would somehow fool prospective buyers, the simple fact that it's _here_ is reassuring.

And it is, in fact, considerably better than a shack. There's a docking platform for a speeder, with plenty of room for a few of her personal vehicles, a mailbox, and some storage. Inside, the rooms are all spacious, dominated by window-walls looking out on Nar Shaddaa. The furniture is simple but perfectly adequate, and anyway the more important thing is the decorations she can use to fill it, souvenirs of her journey as a Sith and travels to places she'd never dared dream she might visit. She settles on the bed, letting her eyes drift around the room, imagining where she might put lights, shelves, wall hangings.

(In more than one room, she has a prominent view of a giant, animated image of a Twi'lek dancer advertising one of many cantinas, which is...a little annoying, and at first she considered choosing a room where she wouldn't have to look at it. In the end, she deliberately took one with the best view of it. That neon woman with no agency or will of her own, existing only as a vessel for the desires of others—it's part of Mirassa's past too, one she doesn't try to pretend she can escape. She was a slave, she will always _have been_ a slave, and she refuses to accept any shame from that truth. Instead, always, she moves forward, takes that history of being forced into weakness and turns it into strength.)

It's dizzying, how much things have changed in such a short time. Oh, her new life is a dangerous one, and she's well aware that her current freedom isn't simple or guaranteed, but—she has money now, enough to satisfy not just needs but occasional whims. She has possessions, valuable ones—relics, speeders, droids, a lightsaber, even a spaceship. She can dress however she wants, travel wherever she wants, even give orders to the people who have placed themselves under her command. And now—

She isn't going to call it a home; that seems too much like daring the universe to take it away, just yet. But she has a house, her own base of operations, a place that _belongs to her_ , and it's surreal in the best possible way.

"I have a house," she says to herself, and laughs out loud, almost giddy with it. "I have a _house_. Damn right my chains are broken."

Because that's the best part, the most terrifying and impossible part: she has all these things, and the ability to make choices, and connections with people she is cautiously beginning to care about, and for the first time she has enough power that she might even be able to keep all of it. If she's smart, and decisive, and just ruthless enough, she can _keep_ everything she's gained.

 _May the Force free you_ , they say, and it did. It does. But more importantly, she has freed herself, and _no one_ can ever take that away.


	2. I am through with lying still

_I originally wrote this a few years ago because I was feeling some feminist rage (I think Gamergate was the specific cause that time, although honestly there's pretty much always a reason for feminist rage) and didn't post it at the time because I was hoping to make an actual coherent fic out of my Sith Inquisitor's experiences. That's pretty unlikely to happen at this point, which is why I have this fic of disconnected scenes instead. In light of the current political garbage fire (Kavanaugh's confirmation, most recently...but again, "feminist rage" is a pretty legit mood all the time, lately), I remembered this scene and figured I'd go ahead and post it. **Please note the new rating** ; this scene is about Mirassa fighting off would-be rapists, and it references sexual violence in some detail. That's what makes it particularly appropriate right now, but it's also potentially triggering. Chapter title is from Emilie Autumn's "Fight Like A Girl," which is...a pretty big mood in general but also for my Inquisitor specifically._

* * *

The act of killing is not quite what Mirassa expected.

She has seen death before, of course; for slaves, it comes with the territory, even if some locations and positions carry a less immediate threat than others. The lifespan of a domestic in a prominent political family, for instance, is probably not a bad one. But Mirassa has seen the effects that years of physical labor can have on the body, the way miners are ground down to nothing, empty beds with no explanation, limbs caught in machinery and torn off and the unfortunate workers put down like crippled beasts. She has seen slaves die from beatings. She knows how to run because sometimes drunk, wealthy young people like to hunt slaves down for sport, and she knows what can happen to those who are not as swift as she is.

And she has seen what can happen to women like her, whose bodies make them prized but replaceable commodities, less individually valuable than pieces of artwork. She remembers a graceful young Twi'lek woman—girl, really—whose dancing caught the eye of a patron who had probably never been made to listen to the word "no" in his life, how she went missing one day and Mirassa found her nearly a week later, propped against a trash bin, naked and unconscious and barely breathing, nearly all of her skin darkened by vicious bruises. She remembers burns on the girl's wrists that showed she'd been tied or chained, deep bite marks on her breasts, blood caked all over her mangled head-tails. She remembers that the man responsible for this brutality was made to pay a fine for property damage, with which the girl's owner immediately replaced her, and Mirassa never learned what happened to her, whether she died of her injuries or was sent away for menial labor, having been robbed of the asset for which she had been valued.

When three other acolytes corner Mirassa on her second day at the academy—all male, two human and one purebred Sith, the exact sort who used to relish tormenting people like her—what she feels is not fear, not the sickeningly familiar helpless fury that has kept her mind her own but has never done anything to protect her body or her life.

Fury, yes. But finally, _finally_ , she can act on it, and that knowledge alone is exhilarating, no matter the outcome of this confrontation. They might kill her, but she isn't going down quietly. Whatever they intend to do, she doesn't just have to _take it_.

She steadies her stance and bares her teeth at the acolytes in a ferocious grin. "Need something, boys?"

The taller of the two humans leers at her. "Thought we'd see how much we could make the new slave squeal before we took it apart and sent it back where it belongs. But now I'm thinking I might be persuaded to let you live a little longer if you can show us that pretty mouth is good for something."

"Oh, it is," Mirassa says, "but my hands are better," and with that she flings out a bolt of electricity that slams directly into his groin.

He staggers back, wheezing, face twisted in pain and rage, and snarls, "You're going to pay for that, bitch."

"I have no doubt," Mirassa says, and then the fight really begins.

It doesn't last long. These privileged young men have never tasted anger like that which fuels her power, swelling up through her and outward into currents of blinding light. One of them gets in a good hit with his training saber, but she's _quick_ , much faster than they are, and otherwise they barely manage to touch her. She laughs aloud as power sings through her veins.

A blast of lightning flings the taller human into the wall, and he crumples to the floor, limp and unmoving, neck twisted to the side. Mirassa appraises him for a second and then stares a challenge at the other two acolytes, who demonstrate enough sense to retreat. When she is certain they have left, she crouches to press two fingers to the fallen acolyte's wrist, just to check. No pulse throbs under her fingers; no breath stirs in his chest, and she sits back on her heels, catching her breath, studying her first kill. She hadn't specifically intended to kill any of them, but she hadn't tried to hold back, either, and she can find in herself no regret—only triumph and the satisfaction that comes with knowing she can protect herself now.

She's not helpless anymore. Even if she dies on Korriban, she will have that, and no pathetic, arrogant little boys can take that away.


End file.
